Sunday, May 10, 2009

It hit me a little while ago that the timeline that's been given for Native American migration to the Americas has been interpreted in a very wrong direction by many white Americans. The timeline for migration across the Bering strait is from 10,000 BC to 15,000 BC. Usually, white Americans have taken the Bering strait migration hypothesis as an indication that Native Americans are recent migrants to the Americas and so have societies that aren't as advanced as Old World ones. There's a big problem with that, though, and it's apparent if you look at the timelines of the most ancient civilizations in the Old World. For instance, Sumerian civilization dates from 6,000 BC on up. Egypt only has what would be called the very beginnings of a developing civilization around 5,000 BC, and this is very far away from what we normally think of when we think of Egypt. The earliest dates for writing confirmed to be an ancestor of Chinese, according to Wiki, are between 6,000 and 5,000 BC, with the evidence coming from rock carvings.

All of these dates are within the timeframe of Native American migration to the United States and North and South America, meaning that the Native American presence is just as old as Egyptian civilization, Sumerian civilization, and (some parts of) Chinese civilization.